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Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement!

Tips and Traps

  1. Autostart *.desktop configuration files are located in directories /etc/xdg/autostart and ~/.config/autostart/ . By default, autostart applications in /etc/xdg/autostart are not shown to users in “Startup Applications Preferences” while autostart application in ~/.config/autostart are shown to users in “Startup Applications Preferences”.

  2. If you use multiple Linux desktop environments, you can customize desktop configuration files for different Linux desktop environments. Please refer to Desktop Entry Specification for details.

  3. By default, a *.desktop file under /etc/xdg/autostart or ~/.config/autostart enables an application to autostart. There are 2 ways to disable autostart of the application.

    • Add the line Hidden=True into the desktop file. This is the recommended way.

    • Remove the desktop file. This is not recommended, generally speaking.

  4. If you want to disable an autostart application defined by a desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart, you’d better make a copy of the desktop file into ~/.config/autostart and disable there unless you want to disable it system-wide .

  5. Sometimes, it’s helpful to delay the start of some applications (e.g., Dropbox).

    • makes your Linux machine boot faster

    • a non-system application might fail to auto start without configuring a delay

    The universal way to configure a delay is to add a sleep into the Exec= line. For example

     :::text
 Exec=sleep 10 && /usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=/app/bin/dropbox-app com.dropbox.Client

    Some Linux desktop environments support their specific keys for delayed autostart in .desktop files. For example, GNOME supports X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay. However, some Linux desktop environments (e.g., KDE) don’t have such as equivalent.

A List of Autostart Applications to Disable

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